Also this week, Dr. Roxanne Gay published a piece of commentary in The New York Times about the return to the public sphere of celebrity men who had been accused of sexual misconduct.
And, finally, as Erin wrote about, there are the Department of Education's proposed rule changes to the sexual assault guidelines for schools.
It was a tough week. These three events, on their own, are each frustrating, maddening, demoralizing. I will focus mostly on Baylor in this post, but what I took from this week, from these things--in the aggregate--is that they are a clear demonstration of how little we care about victims and how little attention is given to prevention.
As I write this post, Gay's latest book, an anthology of stories about rape and sexual assault called Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture sits on my end table where it has been for weeks. I have not had the emotional fortitude to pick it up. I certainly do not have it this week. But I know I must begin to read these stories--as everyone who has the ability to should. Because as the Baylor news and the surprise appearance of Louis C.K. at the Comedy Store in NYC this week, and the rumors of Matt Lauer's return to public life reveal--victims' stories are being erased, manipulated, and conveniently forgotten.
Baylor engaged in manipulation--horribly offensive and immoral behavior. (Is it even necessary to say "especially for a religiously affiliated school that implicitly claims a moral high ground"?)
Baylor, of course, denies the characterization of the Director of Student Activities, Matt Burchett as a mole saying that students were free to turn down his suggestions and that he was just keeping administration apprised of what was happening among the student body; in other words--this is his job. There was no respect for confidentiality, and there were no good intentions in regard to helping these students.
The utter violation of trust--at multiple turns--is one of the things I found so astounding in this story. These students already did not feel supported. They went to administrators to share their stories and nothing was done. Some were told that the person they reported as their assailant already had reports against him. There are so many accounts, from victims across the country, that include stories about being re-traumatized. Some victims have shared that the greatest trauma. the greatest violation, was what happened after their assaults.
It is time to shift the thinking about what constitutes "action" when we are talking about and reporting on sexual assault complaints on college campuses. Let's stop saying that schools did nothing in response to reports of sexual assault and harassment on their campuses. Because ignoring a complaint is doing something. Because telling a student that her reported rapist has other complaints against him and yet he is still on the football team, is doing something. It is denying a student action, a version of safety, access to education. It is breaking the law. It is doing harm. There is nothing passive about these actions. The deliberateness of Baylor's response not to the actual assaults but to the negative publicity the school and administrators received when the culture and patterns of sexual violence were revealed reflect this.
One issue with the proposed new regulations is that schools' active inactions, what Erin referred to as the "insufficient response," will not necessarily result in liability. (It was pretty clear that Baylor responded with deliberate indifference, so the proposals would not necessarily leave them unaccountable.)
I want to point out that we are not even talking about stopping or curbing rape, assault, and harassment--not really. We are talking about how effectively schools are responding to these incidents. The discussions about climates of sexual violence are side conversations at this point. The focus of activism and certainly of lawsuits and complaints is about how schools address reported rapes--not about how to stop them from happening in the first place. And while these things might, in some ways, be related, those connections are not explicit.
What is a sufficient/an effective/a just response, is at issue in the Baylor case and also a topic in Gay's column. She writes about the #metoo movement and men in the public sphere, but her work is applicable to what is happening on college campuses and what could/will happen if the proposed regulations are put into effect (after the public comment period). I excerpted the following from Gay's piece that I found particularly relevant:
And
this is what is so difficult about justice and sexual violence — the
repercussions of the crime can last a lifetime. Satisfying justice may
not be possible, but we can certainly do better given that all too
often, victims of sexual harassment and violence receive no justice at
all.
We
spend so little energy thinking about justice for victims and so much
energy thinking about the men who perpetrate sexual harassment and
violence. We worry about what will become of them in the wake of their
mistakes. We don’t worry as much about those who have suffered at their
hands. It is easier, for far too many people, to empathize with
predators than it is to empathize with prey.
We see this empathy in the support for the backlash movement in which the accused are suing their institutions, claiming versions of reverse discrimination and sexism. We see it in the proposed rule changes and the Secretary of Education's public comments about campus sexual assault and a "fair" process for everyone. We see it in the support for fired football coach Art Briles.
Less publicized is the vitriol aimed at the women who file reports and complaints. We do not keep statistics about how many of them leave their institutions. How many vile things are tweeted or posted on Facebook and other social media platforms about them.
And while there are numbers about how many schools are facing complaints, the majority of the stories behind these complaints are far less public than the ones at Baylor, which--like Louis C.K.--continues to press on largely unscathed and offering little in the way of apologies.
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